In Most Cases, Angioplasties Are Not Needed: Study

Mar 27, 07:20 PM

Current Headlines: NEW ORLEANS: People terrified by crippling chest pains want their doctors to do something fast to make them feel better and cut the chances they will have a heart attack or die.

For years, doctors have done artery-opening angioplasties for these reasons.

Now, stunning results of a landmark study have proved them wrong.

Researchers found that angioplasty did not save lives or prevent heart attacks in non-emergency heart patients.

An even bigger surprise: Angioplasty gave only slight and temporary relief from chest pain, the main reason it is done.

"By five years, there was really no significant difference" in symptoms, said Dr William Boden of Buffalo General Hospital in New York. "Few would have expected such results."

He led the study and gave the results on Monday at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology. They also were published online by the New England Journal of Medicine and will be in the April 12 issue.

Angioplasty remains the top treatment for people having a heart attack or hospitalized with worsening symptoms. But most angioplasties are done on a non-emergency basis, to relieve chest pain caused by clogged arteries crimping the heart's blood supply.

Those patients now should try drugs first, experts say. If that does not help, they can consider angioplasty or bypass surgery, which unlike angioplasty, does save lives, prevent heart attacks and give lasting chest pain relief.

In the study, only one-third of the people treated with drugs ultimately needed angioplasty or a bypass.

"You are not putting yourself at risk of death or heart attack if you defer," and considering the safety worries about heart stents used to keep arteries open after angioplasty, it may be wise to wait, said Steven Nissen, a Cleveland Clinic heart specialist and president of the College of Cardiology.

Why did angioplasty not help more?

It fixes only one blockage at a time whereas drugs affect all the arteries, experts said. Also, the clogs treated with angioplasty are not the really dangerous kind.

Drugs are better today than they used to be, and do a surprisingly good job, said Elizabeth Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. "It may not be as bad as we thought" to leave the artery alone, she said.

About 1.2 million angioplasties are done in the United States each year.

Agencies

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